In today's enterprise environments, remote management of computing devices on the enterprise network is increasingly commonplace. The information technology (IT) departments of organizations are able to perform numerous tasks on user devices on the network quickly, efficiently, and in an automated and cost-effective manner by having remote access to devices via a network. For example, the IT department can update, replace, or fix applications or operating systems on user devices by remotely accessing the user devices and transmitting any needed files over the network. However, numerous difficulties still persist.
For example, the process of replacing a desktop image on a user device (e.g., with a backup desktop image) still presents numerous difficulties and inconveniences to both the user and the IT department. There are many cases in which IT may need to replace the desktop image installed on a user's physical device. For example, a user's laptop may have been broken or stolen and the user received a new laptop onto which the user's desktop image needs to be placed. The user may have upgraded to a new desktop or laptop, requiring the user's desktop image to be placed onto the new desktop or laptop. The user's desktop image may need to be replaced because the computing device is not functioning properly (e.g. the system crashes). In these cases and others, IT would like to reduce the user down time to the bare minimum and to allow the user to quickly get back to work on the machine. However, current desktop re-imaging solutions usually require several hours or days to complete the re-imaging process. Throughout this period of time, the user must stay connected to the network and usually cannot make productive use of the computing device.
Generally, traditional solutions require that the entire image is copied to the target machine before the user can use the machine. These solutions take a long time to deploy the image (e.g., the process can consume several hours for a real-world user image). Examples of such solutions include Ghost by Symantec Corporation and True Image by Acronis International GmbH. Other solutions use streaming technology and require the entire disk image to be streamed before the user can use the machine offline, which is not practical in real-world scenarios.
More recent solutions, such as Mirage by VMware, Inc., allow a user to begin using the computing device before the entire desktop image is replaced by first downloading a small version of an operating system and critical applications so that the user is able to start using the computing device while the remaining files are transferred. However, while these approaches are superior in many respects to solutions that require full image transfer before the device can be used, the user still has to wait for the small version of the operating system and critical applications to be downloaded before she can resume work, which, depending on the available resources, can consume a significant amount of time. Further, such solutions generally require multiple phases to implement as the computing device is first booted with the small version of the operating system and then booted again once the desktop image is replaced.
A more efficient approach is desirable for replacing desktop images on user devices on enterprise networks.